A former Port Elizabeth detective who was found guilty of defeating the ends of justice after she hid a wanted gang suspect, thought to be her lover, from the police appeared extremely annoyed when her sentencing proceedings were postponed to January.
Alicia Beeming, 34, pleaded guilty in 2017 to shielding Upstand Dogs gang member Hans Jordaan from authorities while he was a suspect in an attempted murder investigation.
Beeming was a specialised investigator in the gang task team at the time.
In her plea explanation before magistrate Onke Myataza in the Port Elizabeth Regional Court, Beeming admitted to having knowledge of Jordaan’s whereabouts at the time of the investigation.
“I had knowledge of his whereabouts [and] contacted him and had meetings with him on several occasions,” she said in the explanation.
Beeming was originally released on warning but Myataza later made her pay R500 bail after she failed to attend court proceedings.
On Monday, prosecutor advocate Jason Thysse told the court though a probation officer’s report had been compiled, it was in Afrikaans and still needed to be translated.
Thysse told Myataza there was information in the report he would not be able to give as there was no court interpreter or translator available.
Thysse requested that the matter be stood over to Wednesday for the translated report to be made available and for him to call a witness to give evidence in aggravation of sentencing.
Beeming’s legal representative, Hennie Bence, asked the court to postpone the matter as he was involved in another case at the Commercial Crimes Court which he said he needed to attend to this week.
Bence told the court he would be available on November 6.
However, Myataza said it would not be possible as he was fully booked for the month.
“I cannot risk the matter to be squeezed into November. So it is unfortunate that today [Monday] we cannot go forth with this,” Myataza said.
Sentencing proceedings have now been put down to begin on January 10.
Beeming stormed out of the courtroom several times before court started.
On hearing of the postponement, she stormed out again.